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Wednesday, December 24, 2014

A Community Under Attack? - Article by Outlook Magazine

A Sangh supporter flies a saffron flag atop a vandalised church in Muniguda, Orissa

christians & conversion

The Christian community is in mortal fear as the Sangh parivar steps up attacks over ‘conversions’

A Community Under Attack?Incidents involving Christians since April ’14

Refusal To Supply PDS
Complaint of inadequate supplies to 52 Christian families for two months in Sirisguda, Chhattisgarh, June 2014

***

On the last day of November, Prime Minister Narendra Modi was on a
visit to Nagaland when he received a memorandum from church leaders
seeking his intervention to put an end to the renewed attacks on
Christians reported from across the country. In what seemed to be an act
of defiance, the very next day the altar at the St Sebastian’s Church
in the national capital was burnt to cinders. And no, it wasn’t a short
circuit that did it. The incident triggered outrage and several thousand
Christians gheraoed the Delhi police headquarters the next day to
protest.The brutal 1998 burning of Australian missionary Graham Staines under
A.B. Vajpayee’s watch has faded into the rec­esses of the country’s
short public memory. But in the year of the lord 2014, the installation
of the Modi sarkar appears to have instantly galvanised sec­tions of the
Sangh parivar into a sort of frenzy. Emboldened by RSS chief Mohan
Bhagwat’s pronouncement that all Muslims and Christians were basically
Hindus, Union ministers and BJP MPs have been vying to outdo each other
with outrageous statements dir­ected at the community.The unkindest cut came from the PM’s close aide, HRD minister Smriti
Irani, in the 50th week of the year: a completely unnecessary
controversy over keeping schools and offices open on Christmas day and
observing December 25 as ‘Good Governance Day’, the stars of the day
apparently being Hindu Mahasabha leader Madan Mohan Malviya and
Vajpayee, not Jesus Christ. Christians should feel happy, suggested a
BJP spokesman on television, that the day has been chosen to highlight
good governance.As the Christian world celebrates a season of cheer, here in India
activists estimate there have been as many as 71 incidents of attacks,
arrests, arson, dam­age, disruptions, burglaries, landgrabs involving
the peaceable community in just the first 200 days of Modi’s regime (see graphic).
The icing on the cake came from RSS affiliates who tom-tommed plans to
reconvert Christians on Chri­stmas at Aligarh and Meerut and hold up
Parliament. Meanwhile, even as we go to press a pastor and 15 of his
congregation from Banjara Bap­t­ist church in Hyderbad were beaten up by
Sangh workers as they were singing Christmas carols.“What next?” asks P.C. George, Con­g­ress chief whip in Kerala and a
pre-ele­ction supporter of Modi. “Yes, I was an admirer of Modi’s
development plans but what we now see is that it has been cast aside for
this kind of divisive politics. What are they going to do next? We hear
in the Northeast poor Muslim migrants coming across the border from
Bangladesh have been asked to convert to Hinduism if they want to stay
in India. This is plain cruel, a violation of human rights.” George
still hasn’t given up on Modi, saying he’s probably being made the
sacrificial lamb and it’s the RSS and Sangh parivar who are out to
destroy the secular fabric of the country.

Father Paul Thelakat, spokesperson of the Syro-Malabar church in
Kerala, says, “Christians are fearful and anxious all over India as the
BJP government attempts to suppress the rights of minorities. There has
been compulsion to instal images of Goddess Saraswati in some Christian
schools, to suppress Santa Claus for Christmas and to force Christians
into Hinduism in many places in the country. At the World Hindu Congress
2014, they declared the biggest threats to Hindutva as Macaulayism,
Missionaries, Mater­ial­ism, Marxism and Muslims (described as the
Malicious 5),” he recalls.

“Anti-national
forces are engaged in religious conversion. But we won’t allow it. The
country needs a uniform anti-conversion law.”Brijmohan Agarwal, Chhattisgarh minister, BJP

Admittedly,
some of these incidents have occurred in non-BJP-ruled states too and
it would be a mistake to extrapolate them into a national phenomenon.
Still, there is no denying that a growing mass of lumpen elements are
enjoying the warm sunshine the Modi governm­ent provides by virtue of
being a “maj­o­rity government”. Christian eva­n­g­elists, pastors and
priests have increasingly come under attack. Even the national capital
isn’t safe as Joby Thomas (name changed) found out in September. A
prayer meeting was being held when some miscreants arrived and demanded
that they cease and disperse. Most of the people dispersed but when the
police came, they arrested some of the Christians and took them to the
station. Joby and a few others followed to help those taken into
custody.
At the station compound, a crowd had assembled by then with even a TV
crew in attendance. While they were walking to the station, someone
called him from behind and asked if he belonged to the arrested group.
When he said yes, he got a tight slap on his left ear. “I was literally
seeing stars,” says Joby. With the situation volatile, he and his
friends ran into the police station. Joby though was thoroughly beaten
up. The police put the 12-13 of them also in the lock-up even as the mob
outside bayed for their blood. The policemen even advised them to stand
close to the wall so that they could not be seen from outside. Later,
after the mob had dispersed, a police officer jokingly mentioned that
“you were arrested pre­c­isely for singing and praying”.Kirti Ratnam, a well-to-do Christian homemaker in Delhi who’s married
to a Hindu, says that while she herself has not faced any
discrimination, on almost every visit to the church she and others in
the congregation hear requests to pray for someone or the other who has
been attacked or abused. “I feel upset and angry at not being able to
voice my outrage even in social media lest I jeopardise the safety of my
family,” she exclaims.

Christians protest the church arson attack in Delhi with a candle-light vigil, Dec 7, 2014

That said, she’s lucky, she and other affluent Christians do not have
to bear the brunt of the attacks taking place in large parts of the
countryside. That has followed a familiar pattern, as descri­bed by
Father Anand, national president of the Rashtriya Isai Mahasangh. “We
are being harassed, and our activities are being curbed. Nowadays, the
police feel free to raid any Christian congregation, claiming
conversions are being done there,” he says. Fr Anand says, and not
without a tinge of sarcasm, that while BJP leaders are keen to get their
wards admitted to missionary schools in cities, they were allergic to
missionaries working in rural and tribal areas.What’s
surprising is also the muted response from political parties in the
opposition. Says Rev Abraham Mar Poulos, chairperson of the
socio-political commission of the Mar Thoma Syrian Church, “No one’s
talking. We had great expectations from the BJP government but some of
the comments of the Sangh parivar and certain individuals in the BJP
have brought us much grief. The recent incidents will be the real test
of the PM.”As in Vajpayee’s 1998, at the heart of the blowback against
Christians is conversion, the belief that Christian missionaries are
converting large masses of Indians, especially in the tribal areas, to
Christianity. And this despite the fact—borne out by the 2011
census—that after 2000 years of Christianity in India, the population of
Christians constitutes only 2.3 per cent of India’s 1.25 billion.Right-wing Hindus, especially of the net-savvy kind, do not see the
irony in Hindu evangelists converting people in western countries to
Hinduism. Says Rev Pratheesh Joseph of the Salem Church in Kochi, “The
number of foreigners flocking to the neo-Hinduism centres of Mata
Amritanandamayi and Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and converting to Hinduism goes
unnoticed. There are hundreds of centres of these religious leaders in
the West. But no Christian is worried about this kind of conversion.” Contrary to the belief in the media and among people, anti-conversion
laws enacted by several state legislatures are not yet ‘laws of the
land’, having yet to receive assent from the respective governors
(including in states ruled by the BJP for long). The legislations have
also been challenged in court and the final word is still awaited. But
the fact is, the police in these states have been taking action under
these ‘laws’, instituting cases against Christian pastors, even putting
many of them behind bars. Some instances:

In Chhattisgarh, official records reveal that over 700
complaints have been registered under the Act in police stations in the
last eight years. Preliminary inquiries led to 270 cases filed by the
police. Over a hundred accused pastors were arrested but later enlarged
on bail. Significantly, around 40 of them have since been acquitted by
the courts, says Arun Pannalal of the Chhattisgarh Christian Forum.

In 2003, the Gujarat government pushed for the ‘Freedom of
Religion Act’ which mandated that if someone wanted to change his
religion, he must necessarily seek the permission of the district
collector. For the next five years, the state did not frame rules for
the implementation of the law. They finally did so in 2008 and the
constitutional validity of this law was challenged in the Gujarat High
Court. The HC sent a notice to the state government but till today the
latter has not responded to it, claims Father Cedric Prakash.

The MP assembly amended the ‘Freedom of Religion Act’ in July
last year without any debate. The amendment, which provides for
stringent punishment, was pushed through despite the government’s past
experience in 2006 when the amendment was sent to the President. A
presidential reference was then sought from the solicitor-general and
the governor refused to give his assent on the basis of opinion
received.

The series of attacks against religious minorities has not gone
unnoticed by western diplomats and observers either. However, the
euphoria that Modi has created on reviving the Indian economy and
opening up India as an attractive investment destination and market
con­tinues to be the overriding factor for the West. Many western
diplomats admit that for now India under Modi is being viewed solely
through the prism of economics. “For the time being, everybody is just
focusing and hoping for quick economic reforms in India,” says a western
diplomat.

That said, many western countries have appointed ambassadors-at-large
whose task is to collect information from different parts of the world
on sensitive issues. Issues like religious persecution is top on their
agenda. It may, therefore, not come as a surprise if in the coming days
countries start raising this sensitive issue with the Indian government
during discussions.BJP sources say the prime minister has conveyed his displeasure over
the activities of Sangh-affiliated organisations to Nagpur. Modi has
also personally ticked off party MPs, asking them to exercise restraint.
A message, sou­rces say, has also been sent out from the RSS leadership
to its cadre to take it slow. But does that mean that the winter chill
will see right-wingers burying their agendas? Highly placed sources say
this is unlikely. Indeed, the reverse is possible with the saffron world
stepping up propaganda through Goa-like conclaves and seminars.By Minu Ittyipe in Kochi, K.S. Shaini in Bhopal, Yashwant Dhote
in Raipur and Mihir Srivastava in Delhi with Dola Mitra in Calcutta,
Pranay Sharma in Delhi and Prarthna Gahilote in Mumbai)